John Spano

John Angelo Spano Jr. (born May 31, 1964) is an American businessman and admitted fraudster.

He graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in business administration in 1986.

He later agreed to buy the remaining 10 percent of the team held by the management group that had been running the Islanders' day-to-day operations since 1989.

Spano billed himself as the owner of a leasing operation that he had built from one company with four employees to a group of 10 companies with 6,000 employees worldwide in a period of just six years.

He claimed to be worth $230 million, most of which he attributed to have been inherited from his wealthy grandfather Angelo; he also claimed to own his $3 million University Park house free and clear.

Pickett and Bettman were initially confident about Spano, deeming him a lifesaver for the once-proud franchise.

The Islanders had fallen on hard times after their four consecutive Stanley Cup championships, having missed the playoffs in five of the previous eight years; furthermore, the team was suffering at the gate, and rumors abounded that they were about to move to Atlanta, Nashville or Houston.

Spano committed to keeping the team on Long Island and either renovate, rebuild or replace the aging Nassau Coliseum.

He paid for the team at signing with a loan from a syndicate of banks headed by Fleet Bank.

After working several sales jobs in Pittsburgh and Dallas, he founded the Bison Group in 1990, a Dallas-based company that primarily leased aircraft.

In September 1995, he reached a tentative agreement to buy a 50 percent interest in the Dallas Stars, but the date for the closing was pushed back several times, during which Spano began making what owner Norman Green called unreasonable demands.

Green backed out of the deal in November, eventually selling the team to Tom Hicks.

Years later, Jim Lites, the Stars' president at the time, recalled visiting Spano's mansion in the Dallas suburb of University Park.

Despite Spano's claimed wealth, Lites said the house was unfurnished.

Among the "laughable" excuses Spano offered were that he needed a copy of a written agreement with the team's top minor league affiliate, the Kalamazoo Wings and to have his South African partners meet with Stars officials.

Lites also said that Spano insisted that Lites pick up the tab for their dinners—something Lites said he had never seen in all of his years as a sports executive.

Spano also made a bid for the Florida Panthers that year after his Stars bid failed, which he abandoned after then-Panthers owner Wayne Huizenga opted not to sell.

He is best known for briefly buying control of the New York Islanders franchise of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1996, before it emerged that he did not have nearly enough assets to buy the team.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to bank and wire fraud and served a federal prison sentence.

In October 1996, Spano agreed to buy the New York Islanders from longtime owner John Pickett for $165 million: $80 million for Pickett's 90 percent stake in the team and $85 million for its lucrative cable television contract with SportsChannel New York, which at the time earned the Islanders $13 million a year.

Despite his failures to purchase both teams, Spano began to attract the attention of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who stated in an April 1997 interview that Spano was "the type of person we want as an owner."

Bettman later recanted the remark after Spano's exposure.

He and Pickett agreed to a five-year installment package for the cable rights, and the league's other owners approved the sale in February 1997.

The first $16.5 million payment on the cable rights was due on April 7; however, the money was not there that day.

Spano promised Pickett the money would be wired out, showing him a letter from Lloyds Bank in London as proof; Pickett was satisfied and he closed the deal.

Ahead of the deal's closure, Spano had already pumped $2.5 million into the team's payroll and forced head coach/general manager Mike Milbury to cede the head coaching position to Rick Bowness.

He also let it be known that he intended to be a major player in the free-agent market that summer.

When the NHL's Board of Governors met in June 1997, Spano was not present.

Instead, the Islanders were represented by two men from the Pickett regime.

Upon further investigation, it emerged that Spano had only paid a total of $26,200 to Pickett for the cable rights after five attempts.

On one attempt, he'd wired Pickett only $5,000 instead of the $5 million originally agreed upon.

On another, a $17 million check had bounced.

On another, he sent $1,700 when he was supposed to send $17 million.

At the request of Pickett, Bettman ordered Spano to remove himself from day-to-day control of the Islanders and not use any team assets until the dispute could be settled.

In early July, Newsday, acting on tips from anonymous Islanders executives that their new boss was worth significantly less than advertised, began investigating Spano's background.

On July 9, Newsday published a story that exposed Spano as a fraud who was not worth even a fraction of the money required to complete the Islanders deal.

Among other things, the Newsday investigation revealed:

Spano was convicted of 16 counts of forgery in Ohio in 2015 and is currently incarcerated in Grafton Correctional Institution with a scheduled release date of November 2024.

Spano was born in New York City but spent most of his life in Madison, Ohio, and graduated from Ashtabula St. John High School.

While at St. John he was a classmate and a high school football teammate of Urban Meyer.